Configuration backup and documentation for Ms. Ford's Raspberry Pi B2 ricing
The two most important images for the ricing configuration are ~/Pictures/Wal/bg1.jpg (the Ford logo) and ~/Pictures/Wal/terminal_img.jpg (the adorable baby goat). bg1.jpg is the wallpaper background and terminal_img.jpg is the image presented when the neofetch command is executed in the terminal. I don't know whether or not the images you choose must have certain dimension specifications, because the defaults I chose worked on the first try. For the sake of aesthetics, it's recommended that terminal_img.jpg has square dimensions.
The beautiful thing about i3 is that it augments productivity by a large margin by allowing for quick navigation between (and straightforward modification of) windows. Combine this with proficiency in vim, and it's a programmer's dream. i3 removes the need for a mouse (using a mouse is still possible, however; sometimes it is even rather convenient) by assigning several modes and functions to the keyboard. At the heart of these keyboard shortcuts is the $mod key, which is defined in ~/.config/i3/config. By default, $mod is set to Mod4, i.e. the Windows key. You can change the several shortcuts as well as the key used for $mod by editing your ~/.config/i3/config file. Warning: setting a different key as $mod may interfere with other shortcuts (for instance, using Shift as $mod may make capitalization impossible without using Caps Lock).
Here are a few shortcuts; the full list is available in ~/.config/i3/config. Read the config file to understand it, and, if necessary, make changes to make the most of your configuration.
Use $mod+Return (i.e. $mod+[Enter]) to open a new terminal window
Use $mod+Shift+q to close the current window
Use $mod+d to open dmenu
Use $mod+h to make tiled windows split horizontally next time you create a new window
Use $mod+v to make tiled windows split vertically next time you create a new window (ex: pressing $mod+Return then $mod+v then $mod+Return will create two vertically-aligned terminal windows)
Use $mod+Shift+c to reload/refresh your configuration
Use $mod+Shift+space to make a floating window tiled (or vice versa)
Use $mod+space to toggle between tiling/floating-focus mode. When in floating-focus mode, you can access your floating windows, and when in tiled-focus mode you can access your tiled windows
In tiled-focus mode, use $mod+ArrowKey to change focus to the tiled window to the ArrowKey-direction of the currently focused window (e.g. $mod+Down will change focus to the tiled window below your currently focused tiled window)
In floating-focus mode, use $mod+Left/Right to cycle through your floating windows
Note that you can also simply click on the window you want using the mouse.
Use $mod+# to switch to workspace #, where # is an integer between 0 and 9, inclusive
Press $mod to be able to resize floating windows with the mouse
Hold $mod to be able to move a floating window using the mouse
Use $mod+Shift+ArrowKey to move the focused floating window in the direction of the ArrowKey pressed
Use $mod+Shift+# to move the focused window to workspace #, where # is an integer between 0 and 9, inclusive
Use $mod+r to enter resize mode. After entering resize mode, use the arrow keys to resize the window. Then press the Escape key to exit resize mode
Dmenu is kind of like a Start Menu search bar, and it is the ideal way to open GUI applications such as midori (the lightweight Web browser). By default, $mod+d opens dmenu, from which you can search for and open GUI-based programs. (You can try to open non-GUI programs, but it won't do anything.) For example, instead of executing
$mod+Return #launch terminal
program & #launch "program" outside the terminal
exit #close terminal
to "cleanly" open an application through urxvt (i.e. the terminal), you can simply execute
$mod+d #open dmenu
program [Enter] #search for "program" and run it
to open an application using dmenu.
Ranger is pretty straightforward. It is a terminal-based file manager that integrates well with the riced theme. Execute ranger in a terminal, and the entire terminal will be transformed into a file manager that is pretty intuitive to navigate. Vim users will find the way ranger behaves rather familiar. Type :q[Enter] to quit ranger. Learn more about how to use ranger here.
Lemonbar is a program that sends its input to the bar at the bottom of the screen. The input is acquired through the shell script at ~/.config/lemon/lemonfeeder.sh. It is composed of several functions that extract system info through bash commands. For instance, the function geteth() executes ifconfig, searches for an instance of "eth0" in the output, and then uses Unix positional parameters to print the accompanying local IP address:
geteth(){
var=$(echo $(ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet ') | awk '{print $2;}')
echo "E: $var"
}
...
BAR_INPUT="$(gitHelpMessage)${TABB}...$(geteth)${TABB}...$(clock)${TABB}"
echo "%{r}${F#2B84BB} $BAR_INPUT"
Then, geteth() is called by BAR_INPUT, which concatenates the output of all the other system info functions, separating each datum by 5 spaces (the ${TABB} variable). The concatenated data is returned by the shell script, which pipes this output to lemonbar, which puts the info at the bottom of the screen. lemonfeeder.sh runs every second, making the bar consistently update itself. (See ~/.config/i3/config to view exactly how lemonbar is called.)
If you want make changes to the lemonbar, then add a bash function that parses and/or returns what you want to the body of lemonfeeder.sh and then add the function to the BAR_INPUT variable (which is also in the .sh file) in the order that you want. Reload your computer to finalize changes (i.e. run reboot in a terminal). You can also change the color of the bar foreground and background by editing the final echo command in lemonfeeder.sh according to the formatting rules documented here.
By default, there is a (non-clickable) link on the lemonbar to this repository (in case support is sought). You can remove this by deleting the $(gitHelpMessage)${TABB} from BAR_INPUT.
- nano - straightforward in-terminal text editor
- gedit - GUI text editor
- midori - lightweight browser
- ranger - file manager
neofetch- command that pretty-prints various system info in the terminalwget- command that downloads a file from a URLchmod +x [file]- command that makes a file executablereboot- command the restarts the computershutdown- command that shuts down the comuter (useshutdown nowto shutdown immediately)sudo apt-get install [package]- command that installs a program, assuming it exists in the Raspbian repositories
If certain files in your .config directory get lost, ruined, etc., then you can replace the files within the directory (or replace the entire directory, if you wish to revert to defaults) with the files in the .config directory from this repository.
To revert to intended defaults, run the following commands:
git clone https://github.com/tiwalayo/ford-rc
cp -r ford-rc/.config ~/.config
rm -rf ford-rc
To change a certain file(s):
git clone https://github.com/tiwalayo/ford-rc
cp ford-rc/.config/file-to-replace ~/.config/file-to-replace
cp ford-rc/.config/file2-to-replace ~/.config/file2-to-replace #do this for however many files you want to replace
rm -rf ford-rc/ #after you're done replacing files
If you have any issues or questions, submit a ticket in the issues tab of this repository and I'll look into it.